Hister Safari extension (unofficial)

This is an unofficial Safari port of the Hister browser extension. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the upstream Hister project. The upstream maintainer has declined to include Safari support in-tree (see issue #49); this repository exists to make a signed, notarized Safari build available anyway.

Hister is a self-hosted personal search engine that indexes the full contents of pages you visit (and PDFs you open) so you can search them later. The browser extension is what sends visited pages to your Hister server; this repo packages that extension for Safari on macOS.

The wrapper adds no telemetry and makes no network calls beyond what upstream Hister does.

What this repo contains

• vendor/hister/ — the upstream Hister source, pinned to a specific commit as a git submodule.
• patches/ — Safari-only overrides applied to the upstream extension bundle at build time (manifest tweaks, a small background-script shim).
• Safari/ — host app + Safari Web Extension target sources. The Hister.xcodeproj is generated on demand from Safari/project.yml by XcodeGen and is not checked in.
• scripts/ — build and notarization pipeline.
• .github/workflows/release.yml — CI that produces a signed DMG on tagged releases.

Upstream source is never modified; the wrapper only patches the produced dist/ bundle.

Install (end users)

Requires macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later, and a running Hister server you can reach from your Mac.

Once a release is published:

1. Download Hister-<version>.dmg from the Releases page.
2. Open the DMG and drag Hister.app to /Applications.
3. Launch Hister.app once. It will prompt you to open Safari's extension preferences.
4. In Safari → Settings → Extensions, enable Hister.
5. Click the Hister toolbar icon and enter the URL of your Hister server.

Because the app is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized, there is no need to enable "Allow unsigned extensions" and the extension stays enabled across Safari restarts.

Uninstall

Quit Safari, drag Hister.app from /Applications to the Trash, then reopen Safari. Any extension settings stored in Safari are removed with the containing app.

Build (developers)

Requires: macOS with Xcode 15+, plus the tools in Brewfile (Node.js, XcodeGen). An Apple Developer account is needed for signed builds.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/nburns/hister-safari.git
cd hister-safari
brew bundle                   # installs xcodegen + node
scripts/build.sh              # unsigned local build (CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY=- by default)

scripts/build.sh regenerates Safari/Hister.xcodeproj from Safari/project.yml on every run, so if you need to open Xcode directly, run xcodegen generate inside Safari/ first (or just run the build script once).

Edit target/build settings by modifying Safari/project.yml — never by editing the generated .xcodeproj, since your changes will be wiped on the next generate. See AGENTS.md for the full contributor guide.

For a signed build, export your signing credentials and re-run scripts/build.sh; see .github/workflows/release.yml for the exact environment variables.

Updating to a new upstream release

cd vendor/hister
git fetch origin
git checkout <tag-or-sha>
cd ../..
git add vendor/hister
git commit -m "Bump vendored hister to <tag-or-sha>"

Then re-run the build and re-tag.

License

AGPLv3, matching upstream.